EARLY IRON AGE METALWORKING AND IRON AGE/EARLY ROMANO-BRITISH SETTLEMENT EVIDENCE ALONG THE BARTON STACEY TO LOCKERLEY GAS PIPELINE
By Robert De’Athe
with Grace Perpetua Jones (pottery and miscellaneous finds) and Matt Leivers (pottery), Jessica M. Grimm (animal bone), Jacqueline I. McKinley (human remains), Nicholas Cooke (coins), Chris J. Stevens (radiocarbon dates), Catherine Barnett (wood
... [Show full abstract] charcoal), Jörn Schuster (miscellaneous finds), Ruth Pelling (plant remains) and Will Foster (illustrations)
A series of excavations and a watching brief on the route of a gas pipeline from Barton Stacey to Lockerley, Hampshire, revealed evidence of predominantly Iron Age and Romano-British rural settlement activity. A group of Early Bronze Age burials comprising two cremation burials and one inhumation were recorded during the watching brief. A small group of unaccompanied Early–Middle Iron Age inhumation burials and Romano-British fields were recorded at site MT05 near Crawley and a series of Early Iron Age pits at site MT08 near Michelmersh contained mostly domestic waste with a few more unusual deposits including a human skull with sharp-weapon trauma and another containing metalworking debris. No structures were found but the assemblage points to the presence of an early Iron Age farmstead close by operating a mixed farming economy.
A probable Late Iron Age double ditched enclosure was recorded at site MT09 near Awbridge on the west side of the River Test, again indicating a small rural farmstead that continued into the early Romano-British period.
